Happy New Year

There’s a part of me that really wants to rant about how my year started off poorly and ended with a diagnosis that made me want to scream at the sky. The first draft of this post was a full blown rant of me cursing out 2019, starting with the fact that my girlfriend was living in Brazil and I had to work at two jobs just to pay for a school I hated, and ending with a diagnosis of a seizure/panic disorder that has revealed the most terrifying and sudden mental panic I have ever experienced in my life. But I couldn’t release it that way.

Because it isn’t an accurate representation of how I feel. It’s tempting to look at the past calendar year and find a lot of negatives. This is always true. It’s 365 days of 24 hours each, of course there is bound to be weeks of uninterrupted negativity. But I can’t sit here and write that post without realizing how lucky I am. Yeah, my girlfriend did live in Brazil for January of 2019, but the year is ending with us finally living in the same city again. And our relationship has never been stronger than when we made it through a month of never speaking.

And yeah, I developed PNES, which is to say that my frequent panic attacks produce seizures. But I have an amazing support system, including a best friend I reconciled with during this year, and another who I moved into my first apartment with. I have a great job that I enjoy, hobbies that I have rekindled my energy in, and I’m not in (that much) debt from school.

2019 may have been bad in a lot of ways, but try not to focus on that. Definitely give the bird to the things that suck, but don’t forget where and when and who you have been blessed by.